


Bane of the Doctor - Part 15: The Last Stand of Dirge Manson and Madame Kovarian

by RodimusDoctor



Series: Bane of the Doctor [16]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Multiple Doctors (Doctor Who), Science Fiction, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-14 00:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2170635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RodimusDoctor/pseuds/RodimusDoctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirge Manson has been defeated, but he doesn't take it lying down. Madame Kovarian thinks she has the upper hand, an illusion the Doctor is only to pleased to dispel. One final confrontation awaits, with the fate of the universe hanging in the balance...</p>
<p>...and, whatever became of Clara Oswald and the 8th Doctor?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bane of the Doctor - Part 15: The Last Stand of Dirge Manson and Madame Kovarian

The Doctor watched as Dirge Manson, twin of River Song and adopted son of the late Private “Runaway” Manson, fell to his knees and wept. His face displayed no triumph at his victory, nor did it show any sympathy. Or pity.

It was over. And that was all. Without a word the Doctor walked around Dirge Manson and opened the door to the next chamber.

On the other side were two Church soldiers, one of whom held the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. Madame Kovarian stood with them, bent over and looking up from the device – it appeared she and the soldiers had been trying open the door with it.

“He’s in here,” the Doctor told them. “I’ll take that, thank you.” He reached for his sonic screwdriver, but Madame Kovarian grabbed it away from her soldier first.

“Oh no you don’t, Doctor,” she said. “I think I’ll keep this. Though we are primarily here for Dirge Manson, we’re not about to let you...”

The Doctor whistled, then snatched his screwdriver out of the thin air that had been Madame Kovarian’s solid-light hologram. Her holoprojector clattered on the floor.

“Hey!” said one of the two soldiers as the Doctor walked past them. “You stop right there, or...”

“Don’t,” the Doctor said, glaring over his shoulder at them. “Just don’t.” He turned and walked away once more. The two soldiers looked at him, looked down at their guns, then back up at him again.

“We should...” said the first soldier.

“...secure the prisoner,” said the other. “That is our primary mission, after all.”

“Yes,” agreed the first. “Good plan.”

 

River hovered near the 10th Doctor, literally. The stun blast she’d sustained had caused substantial damage to her holoprojector, making her almost completely transparent. She was more ghost-like than ever before, and still unable to affect the world around her. She couldn’t help the Doctor, nor could she deal with the Church soldiers surrounding them.

“Hasn’t he been through enough?” she snapped at them.

“That’s for Madame Kovarian to decide,” said the soldier with the highest rank.

“Madame Kovarian,” the 11th Doctor announced as he approached, “is indisposed. Out of my way.” He walked past them and knelt before his former self. “River, we’ve got to get him back into his timeline. I’m fairly certain I know where to...”

“Doctor,” River said, “we are surrounded!”

The Doctor turned, looked up, and took the situation in. The Church soldiers looked back at him with serious frowny faces, their guns trained on his hearts.

“You will stand with your hands raised,” said the closest officer. “And you will surrender your sonic screwdriver.”

“With my hands raised?” the Doctor said with barely any humour.

“Just hand it over,” the officer said.

“No,” said the Doctor, his hands still by his sides. “My companion and I have been through enough today. You have who you came here for. Take him and go before I get really cross.”

“Oh, we will,” the officer said. “But you’re coming with us. Come quietly, and we’ll only kill one of your companions.”

“Leave now,” the Doctor countered, “and I’ll let you.”

“Let us?” the officer laughed. “Let us what?”

“Leave,” the Doctor said simply.

“Ignore him,” Madame Kovarian said, storming over toward them with three more soldiers in tow. “He’s bluffing.”

“Not this time,” the Doctor told her.

Behind them, four soldiers led Dirge Manson toward the nearest time capsule.

“I’m sure your explanation would be fascinating,” Kovarian said, “but we really don’t have time for it. Colonel, take...”

“Soon you’ll have nothing but time,” the Doctor said. “You will be trapped here in this moment for eternity.  
“You see,” he went on before anyone could stop him, “this whole place is one big rupture in time. First, Manson hid it between the seconds...”

“Which you have undone, thank you Doctor,” Madame Kovarian said, and she nodded to her soldiers. “But now we’ll...”

“I brought it out of the time-lock,” the Doctor told them while the soldiers grabbed his arms, “but the damage remains. Damage made worse by your own arrival. Throw into the mix two damaged vortex manipulators, and you’ve got...”

“Shut him up, please!” Kovarian snapped, and a soldier clapped a hand over the Doctor’s mouth.

River looked down at herself, then up at the Doctor. He couldn’t speak, but his eyes told her all she needed to know.

She was done for.

“Here, I found his... hey!” said a soldier as he extracted the sonic screwdriver from the Doctor’s coat pocket. “This is still on! Still... screwing!”

“And what is that supposed to achieve, Doctor?” Kovarian asked, nodding to the other soldier to let him speak. “Is that dismantling our weapons or rerouting power for some clever escape gambit?”

“No,” the Doctor replied. “It’s supposed to act as a beacon.”

“A...?” Kovarian started to say.

And then all hell broke loose again. Across the chamber, Dirge Manson attacked and killed the four soldiers guarding him and armed himself with their weapons.

“This is not how it ends!” he shouted, opening fire on the nearest soldiers.

“Take him down!” Madame Kovarian shouted, and her soldiers turned and entered the fray.

“Call them off,” the Doctor said. “Madame Kovarian! Call them off or they will all die.”

“I think you overestimate him, Doctor,” she replied. “No one man could...”

“He’s not just one man and you know it!” River snapped. “Call them off!”

Madame Kovarian assessed the situation before her. Her soldiers should have been enough to defeat Dirge en masse; instead he was massacring them. The Doctor was right, damn him; Manson had more skill, training and sheer determination than twenty of her soldiers. Plus, he clearly had nothing left to lose. She had no great love for them – ultimately, soldiers were expendable – but without them she’d be at the mercy of two of her greatest enemies.

“Fall back,” she ordered. “Retreat to the capsules.”

“We’re letting him escape?” said one of the soldiers holding the Doctor.

“Escape is not his plan,” the Doctor said. “I must face him alone.” Then he smiled a ridiculously big childish grin. “Did you see what I did there? Oh, I should have done the voice...”

“Time and place, Doctor!” River said.

The Doctor sobered quickly. Though the soldiers were indeed fleeing, Dirge was shooting as many as he could in the back.

He’s completely lost it, the Doctor thought. I may not be able to stop him. I really thought I’d have traced my screwdriver here by now. Sometimes I can be so unreliable...

Dirge Manson turned and spied Madame Kovarian and the Doctor. He smiled, and started toward them.

 

I smile and start toward them. So unusual to see Madame Kovarian showing mercy. I would have killed all her soldiers and taken barely a scratch. Instead, slightly less than a third of them get to live to see another day.

The Doctor won’t. I’m tempted to kill his younger incarnation, just to experience the paradox that would create, but I won’t. I want the Doctor to die with as much memory of what I did to him as possible. He will have blocked the 10th Doctor’s memory, allowing his earlier self to carry on. Eleven remembers, though. I’m sure of it.

Shame to waste all the programming still in his head...

...but I’ve toyed with him long enough. My father is dead, so my life no longer has purpose. But I can still avenge him.

As I approach, the Doctor actually steps away from the two hologram ladies and starts toward me! Does he really think he can talk his way out of this? No, I can see in his eyes he does not. He knows he is walking to his death, and I shall not disappoint him. I will be the last thing he sees, the last person he thinks of. I raise my weapons...

There is a noise... a wheezing. The Doctor hears it, too. And he smiles.

“No!” I shout, and let him have it with both barrels.

And watch as my ordnance deflects harmlessly off the Tardis exterior. The doors swing open and a young lady jumps out in front of me with an inexplicable grin on her face.

“Did we miss anything?” she asks. And then she sees me.

She asks who I am. I care not. She is between me and the Doctor. Everything else is irrelevant.

I open fire, but the 8th Doctor leaps from the Tardis and tackles the young lady to the floor in the nick of time.

“Don’t shoot!” he implores, staring up at me with pleading eyes.

“I’m the one you want,” says the 11th Doctor, stepping out from behind the Tardis. “Let her go.”

And I decide to hurt him just a little bit more before I finish him.

“This will destroy you, Doctor!” I say, and I swing my left gun down to point at the young lady’s head.

“No!” the 8th Doctor tries to cover her with his body.

“Clara!” the 11th Doctor cries, and I take a moment to savour his helplessness.

It is my last mistake.

“Goodbye, dear brother.”

I look down and see River Song’s translucent hologram standing next to me, my left arm phasing right through her. I can see her damaged holo-projector, with a sparking vortex manipulator attached underneath. She bends her knees slightly, and her manipulator makes contact with my own.

I realize that this is bad.

And then, the space/time vortex tears open all around me.

 

Dirge Manson and River Song crushed together and disappeared into their own private black hole. The gun Dirge had dropped immediately flew into the event horizon as if drawn by a powerful magnet. The Doctor grabbed hold of the Tardis’ doorway, fingers clutching at the bumps and ridges of the police box structure for purchase.

On the floor, Clara acted on instinct and shoved the 8th Doctor through the Tardis’ open doorway with her feet. At the same time the vortex grabbed her, but the 11th Doctor managed to snag her foot.

“Doctor!” she cried.

“This is really very exciting!” replied the Doctor, who at that moment was clutching at the Tardis outer wall with his right hand. It’s not enough, he thought. And, as he watched pieces of an antique chair and a hat-stand fly out of the Tardis and into the growing event horizon, joined by equipment and discarded weapons and dead soldiers from the chamber around them, the Doctor realized his 10th incarnation was doomed. Without anything tying him down, he would fly helplessly into the vortex just like...

“Doctoooor!!!” screamed Madame Kovarian as she flew past the Tardis.

...that. And the paradox that would result would give the event horizon the strength to devour the universe.

Never a dull moment.

But before that happened, before his fingers gave out, he was determined to save one more life. Even if it was only for a few seconds before the cosmos died, he would save Clara Oswald.

To Be Concluded...


End file.
